Adric Antfarm, in fact, has the single most baffling comment (to me, anyway) ever:

Landmarks are annoying and their auto offer by merchants should be punishable by castration. Once you get a good number of them they are near useless. The same places offer the same ones to me over and over. Do they overwrite? Of course not. They Tribble.

Putting aside the use of "Tribble" as a verb, though I get what he means...that seems ever so slightly harsh. Auto-offering landmarks simply means you can delete the ones you have. Why is this bad? There's a discard button for a reason; that goes double for the Trash feature in inventory. (Adric, try it, it's to die for--you move things to the Trash folder, and then...you can throw them away! It's amazing!)

End of Aprille, we'll have a new Nightmare in theatres. The down side? It's being produced by Michael Bay. Yeah. Michael Bay; thatMichael Bay. The patron saint for overblown productions and reckless spendthrift producers everywhere. I have fear. But I'm still willing to give it a shot because of Jackie Earle Haley. He was a magnificent Rorschach in Watchmen; so yes, I'll go to the film for him alone.

At least, this is one film that Michael Bay can't ruin if the set explodes while two teens make out frantically on a car. Because really? That sort of thing happens in Freddy's world all the time...

You can nearly hear Russian gamers screaming from here about what happened to Allods Online, the country's latest free-to-play game. They may go down in history as the first game ever completely and totally killed by introducing an item shop. Moral of the story? Game companies, don't do it. Your players will desert you and two years from now, they'll write stories on how you went wrong, and by how much.

Meanwhile, over at Jezebel.com, they're talking on how female avatars are just asking for it, with their sexy clothing and their big boobs. Which--well, consider the source; isn't Jezebel.com the last blog to trumpet the she deserved it card? Aren't they supposed to be more female-positive, or something?

Also confusing, for the article: they mention Neelanjana Banerjee's foray into Second Life two years ago, and quote a passage from that article:

"[Wagner James] Au estimates that 40 percent of Second Life residents come in world looking for sexual activity, something that takes a lot more skill than I could even muster up—the sex on Second Life comes from users hacking into animations meant for other things entirely, like riding a motorcycle. Yet when I mention the over-sexuality of my dark skinned avatar, Au says that in a skin like that, I would be pretty much asking for it."

Um...I'm not entirely sure where she got her information from, but no sex animations in SL require the users to "hack into" anything. More to the point, there might be some low-end ones that look like someone is riding a motorcycle, if one takes away all context of what the avatar in question is actually riding, but...really, bring another avatar into the picture, I'm sure it will become clear.

More to the point, there are animations for everything in SL--dancing, being held, firing a chicken gun, cuddling, painting, sculpting, swimming, flying, plus every single page of the Kama Sutra and then some. Why is she stuck on this concept of "hacked" animations?

In fact, actually, now I am curious--where did she get that concept in the first place?

In other news, updated Snowglobe recently; not the 2.0 trunk, but the 1.3.1 version. It rezzes textures and sculpts faster than 1.2.4, but the down side--and it is a LARGE down side, for me--is it's highly unstable.

I won't go into 2.0 again on anything until the Labs make it mandatory, but so far, Emerald, Imprudence, Kirsten, and Snowglobe all bork since 2.0 went live. So it's either "use 2.0 or else"? Is that my option? "Or else"?

Now, Fawkes and I have been discussing my off-and-on experiences with viewer 2.0. Having now talked to him, he reports that this:

is also what he saw. So...I guess alpha mesh works for 1.0 users as well?

Also, let me say this. What I said up there about not going back into 2.0 until the build gets better? I'll break it down for the Lindens, flat out: if they do not bring back translucent windows, I will not use 2.0. The last time the programmers pulled a bonehead stunt we had to literally attack the internal code of the browser itself to insert a line making windows revert to 70% opacity when not actively clicked.

This is my bottom line. It may seem like a frivolous bottom line, but there it is. Bring back 70% opacity on the chat windows, or I won't be in. It is not worth it to me and the browser is useless in all regards until that happens.

2 comments:

Wave wave! Note that my weblog entry on Viewer 2.0 was posted long before said viewer actually came out, so it was more "*if* 2.0 is awful, we can always use a 3rd party viewer that isn't" than it was "2.0 is awful, use a 3rd party viewer instead".

I haven't had time to try 2.0 yet myself, and don't expect to for another couple of weeks. So I am reserving actual judgement (although I fully expect to hate it at first, just 'cause it's different from what I'm used to).

From what I can tell so far (from talking to folks, and use of it m'self), the down sides:

* Chat windows are auto-undocked and no longer tabbed. There's a setting under Preferences (which is under Me now, I believe, not Edit) where you can click a radio button to restore tabbed IM conversations. Then you have to restart the browser, and it does nothing for local (renamed Nearby) chats.

* Building is pretty impossible under 2.0 anyway: everything's renamed, and you can only build (without tweaking) on ground level; trying to create a prim on a prim (like on a build platform, or in a house, or on a stand) doesn't work. This, combined with the renaming of known and understood build terms is driving many makers spare.

* Inventory is completely FUBAR anyway; the wrong counts, the wrong access, and again, the changing of basic terms and understandable icons that have been in steady use since the game's inception, or nearly, rendering many of us unable to effectively work and find things.

* If you install the 2.0 browser, then go back to 1.0 structuring, you gain all the system folders that were created for your avatar under 2.0. (I've since gone back and edited my mention of a particular 'bug' for this one. It's not a bug--2.0 is being told to create new system folders, and 1.0 is being told there are new system folders, so both structures are doing what they're told properly. The problem in this case is the creation of 400+ inventory items in 1.0 architecture browsers that weren't there before.)

And that's just off the top of my head. The up sides? I'm sure there are some. Folks are finding it somewhat easier, once their brains completely rewire, though nearly everyone is fighting body memory to do so. And at least two people beyond me acutely miss the pie menus, which is ironic, because for more than a year now, that's the one thing which the Lindens pledged to erase fastest in 2.0.

calendaria

about the Conductor

There is no train. That's why it's real. Behind the screen I'm a crafter, a writer, a fabric artist; I'm poetically inclined, sarcastic as a profession, and a great admirer of life's oddities, both good and bad. Online I'm a courtesan at Sakura House, but beyond that, I'm a wandering shopper, an explorer, and an admirer of virtual quirks.

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Second Life SL and Linden Lab are trademarks or registered trademarks of Linden Research, Incorporated. No copyright infringement is intended or implied. No affiliation save as a user of the Second Life world is claimed.

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Direct inquiries can be sent to Miss Emilly Orr via aetheric post. You can view her scattered observances on Twitter, on Tumblr, or leave her donations via Lindens in Second Life through her Marketplace store. (Ms. Orr's Tumblr is, rather defiantly, NSFW; please know that in advance).